Jujuy Lunfardo Dictionary

There is a small pueblo north of San Salvador de Jujuy that has constant parties for carnival in the months of January and February. This pueblo is called Tilcara. It is popular among the hippies and artist community and often has an open art market selling stuff the hippies make. Everyone goes up there to party in the streets during the first 2 months of the year. Amber tried to surprise her friends by having them all come to my house to “meet me” and drink or whatever but all of them wanted to go to Tilcara so she ended up just surprising them one by one and we all went to Tilcara together.

We took a bus there that was about 1.5 hours long. It was like a school bus and I felt like I was going on a field trip with kids from high school. It was fun. Amber and I brought a huge bottle of red wine mixed with orange fanta (not the best tasting stuff in the world but I drank it). We finished the whole bottle before we got to tilcara but I wasn’t drunk at all, I just felt full of sugary liquids. Amber has a bladder the size of a kidney bean so she had to pee after like 2 sips. Across from us on the bus was some drunk dude covered in dirt passed out with his shoes falling off.

We arrived at Tilcara about 10pm and walked around. The streets were full of people drinking and singing and playing instruments. There was chorizo cooking on every corner for the hungry drunks. I refrained even though I love choripan!

We kept drinking wine with fanta throughout the night. My mouth began to reject the flavor and since I wasn’t getting any drunker the more I drank it, I decided to stop halfway through the night. We did a lot of standing around and moving from one corner of the plaza to another corner. I went on frequent trips to the bathroom with Amber and her tiny bladder. I met a ton of Amber’s friends. I saw the cops arrest some punk dude who was resisting said arrest. Those were basically the highlights of the night. I enjoyed myself but since i wasn’t drunk I didn’t really take in the full “Tilcara” experience. Things died down at about 4 or 5am and it was getting really cold out. We had to wait until the bus came back at 8am before we could go back home. So for 3 hours we laid in the street, passing out and being woken up by cops or freezing cold breezes. We all slept the entire way on the bus and woke up to a rainy Jujuy when we arrived. We all went back to the Mercadal’s house and slept some more until lunch was ready.

I’d like to go back to Tilcara with my friends at the end of the month. I saw some pretty cool stuff that I wanted to buy from some of the street vendors but I didn’t want to buy it this time because I didn’t want to carry it around with me all night. When I go back to Tilcara I will also be bringing my own beverages of choice, ones that will actually get me drunk and won’t make me gain 3 pounds.